Category Archives: In transit

In transit, London, Mallorca, Wanderer

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[ 17:11 Thursday 15 July 2021 – Port D’Es Canonge, Mallorca ]

On the first of July, Alejandro and I arrived on the island of Mallorca with ten suitcases and two bicycles. After eighteen years in London, it’s time for a new adventure. We plan to stay here a year, possibly longer.

I’m writing now from the terrace of a house in Port D’Es Canonge, a tiny and inaccessible village on the island’s rocky north coast, where the air is filled with birdsong and the afternoon sun hangs drowsy in the sky. We’ll spend our first month here, whilst we hunt for somewhere to rent for the rest of the year.

Our house for July in Port D’Es Canonge

Our arrival in Mallorca was the culmination of a six-month marathon, involving the reorganisation of almost every aspect of our lives. It started in December 2019 when we were given six months’ notice to leave Old Ford Lock, my home in London since 2013. It was a heavy blow, but it prompted us to think about what our next step could be.

For several years a plan had been gestating in The Trampery to establish a rural workspace somewhere in the Mediterranean. Faced with the loss of our London home, Alejandro and I decided to move away and try to realise the project. The experience of the corona lockdown demonstrated I can do most of what I need to do to run The Trampery remotely; via email, phone and video conference. However I still need to attend occasional site visits and meetings face-to-face, so a continuing base in London was vital.

After circling through various ideas, the option we settled on was to rent a house in the Mediterranean, and buy a boat as our London base. Meanwhile having assessed several Mediterranean destinations for The Trampery project, Mallorca emerged as the most promising location. The clock was ticking. We had six months to close up Old Ford Lock, put our belongings into storage, buy a boat and find somewhere to live in Mallorca.

Therefore in the second week of January we started going to visit boats that were up for sale. At first we focused on widebeam canal boats. Then we started looking at Dutch barge conversions. Finally (with a nudge from my father) we progressed to motor yachts, which seemed to be more spacious, lighter, less maintenance-hungry, and more fun on the water.

None of the boats we looked at in London were suitable, so we expanded the search and started visiting boats on the upper Thames; then the River Roach and the River Crouch. When we still didn’t find anything we liked, we broadened the search further to include the whole of Southern and Eastern England.

On 17th March I took the train to Brundall in Norfolk to look at two boats on the river Yare. The first had 2,000 hours on the engines and looked absolutely clapped out. However the second was exquisite, on a different level from anything I’d seen previously. The boat was a Fairline 41/43, built in 1991 in Oundle, powered by a pair of 375 horse-power Caterpillar diesels.

It had a spacious saloon with seating for seven, two comfortable cabins, a well-equipped galley, plus outdoor seating in the cockpit and flying bridge. It was evident that throughout the boat’s thirty-year life, each of its owners had lovingly maintained it, whilst investing in a string of upgrades. These included top-of-the-range navigation technology, a powerful heating system for the winter and an excellent sound system. The boat was beautifully built, with a light oak interior and lots of 90s design touches. Back in London that evening I went through the photos with Alejandro. He thought it was perfect. The next day we made an offer, and by the end of the day it had been accepted.

Orlando, our 1991 Fairline 41/43

Now began a hectic burst of activity. I sought recommendations for local boat surveyors; got quotes; engaged one; organised for the boat to be lifted out of the water; scheduled a trial run on the river. The surveyor’s report gave the boat a clean bill of health. On 15th April I transferred the remaining payment and the boat was ours.

This triggered a second burst of activity. I sought recommendations for an engineer to install a holding tank; got quotes; engaged one; organised for the boat to be lifted out of the water again, so the hull could be painted with anti-fouling; ordered a new anchor chain, after a byzantine process to establish what variety would fit the windlass. Meanwhile Alejandro and I assembled a list of 80 possible names before settling on “Orlando”.

Owning a boat wasn’t going to be much use unless we had somewhere to moor it. Alejandro and I systematically visited every dock, marina and pontoon within spitting distance of London. The one we picked was St Katharine Docks. Constructed by Thomas Telford in 1828, this was London’s most central commercial dock, until its closure in 1968. Then in the 1980s it was redeveloped as an urban marina, surrounded by restaurants, shops, offices and housing.

St Kats’ location next to Tower Bridge and the Tower of London, with the City’s towers looming above it, has an air of unreality. However bearing in mind its central location, the dock itself it is a haven of tranquility. Normally there’s a waiting list of years to get a berth, but because of the corona pandemic several people had shifted their boats away from London, and to our amazement a couple of slots were available. We grabbed one before the situation changed.

The next task was to bring Orlando down from Brundall to London. This would involve a first leg through the Norfolk Broads, a second leg down the North Sea then a third leg up the Thames Estuary. I bought the relevant charts and pilot books and started studying them. However it soon appeared this might all be in vain.

There are only two points where one can exit the Norfolk Broads and get out to sea: at Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft. Each route involves opening a swing-bridge that carries the railway line, allowing boat traffic to pass. However when I called the Broads Authority to make the necessary arrangements, they informed me both railway bridges were currently out of commission for repairs, and it might be six months before they were operational again. They were very apologetic, but said the only way I could get Orlando to London would be transporting it by road!

Fortunately at this point I was introduced to someone who’d been boating in Lowestoft all their life. They asked me how high the boat was, pondered my answer a few seconds, then said we might be able to squeeze under the railway bridge without opening it, so long as we timed it exactly at low tide. There was no guarantee this would work, but it seemed like our best shot to get Orlando to London, so we decided to give it a try.

On 15th May I cast off the lines at Brundall and set off down the River Yare, accompanied by my friend Sara, an expert sailor. We had a few hairy moments, provoked by my total inexperience with twin-prop motor vessels, but thankfully we managed to avoid doing too much damage. At 3.30pm we reached Oulton Broad where we tied up and waited for the lock. At 4.30pm we passed the lock, our Lowestoft skipper came aboard, and we tied up again to wait for low tide.

At 6pm we judged the tide was as low as it was going to get, untied and started creeping towards the railway bridge as slowly as possible. Initially it wasn’t clear whether we’d make it, but as the radar mast came up to the bridge there was 20cm of clearance. Everyone heaved a huge sigh of relief as we passed under the railway lines and out the other side. We carried on through Lowestoft harbour, then moored at the Royal Norfolk and Suffolk Sailing Club overnight.

The next morning we pulled out of Lowestoft at 7am with a clear sky and a calm sea, dodging a flock of maintenance boats heading out to service the North Sea wind farms. It was my first chance to open up Orlando’s throttles. As we passed fifteen knots the hull lifted in the water and we began to plane across the waves. Twenty knots, twenty-five knots, twenty-eight knots. I set the autopilot and started checking that everything was working correctly.

Leaving Lowestoft harbour

The passage down the coast and up the Thames Estuary was one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life. The boat performed magnificently. At 4pm, an hour ahead of schedule, we reached Tower Bridge and the lock gates opened to welcome us into St Katharine Docks. Half an hour later we were tied up on the berth. The first piece of the jigsaw was in place.

The next task was to make a dramatic reduction in my household belongings. Towards the end of May I started photographing bits of furniture and listing them on eBay. Over the following month I managed to sell a five-seater sofa, a three-seater sofabed, an enormous handmade Persian rug, a set of four Danish mid-century dining chairs, a set of six English mid-century dining chairs, a pair of oak carver chairs, a pair of oak wheel-back chairs, a pair of wicker armchairs, a teak extending dining table, a Victorian mahogany chest of drawers and an Edwardian inlaid chest of drawers. With a heavy heart, I also sold the Yamaha upright piano which had been my daily companion for thirteen years.

Alongside the eBay listings, Alejandro and I started giving away anything that wasn’t saleable for free in the Hackney Wick community, and throwing away sacks and sacks of stuff that nobody would want. I went through all my clothes and donated half of them to a charity shop.

As well as reducing our belongings, we also needed to organise somewhere to store what remained. Alejandro researched hundreds of storage units across London and South-East England, finally settling on a business in Romford. At the start of June we began packing everything that was left in the house into cardboard boxes, piling them up around the house like geological formations.

The first items arrive in our Romford storage unit

On 20th June two Brazilian movers took the largest items of furniture along with our books and pictures to the unit in Romford. Then on 27th June a team of three Pakistani movers took everything else, and to our immense relief managed to squeeze it all in. The second piece of the jigsaw was in place.

On 29th June we took a van with variety of clothes, kitchen equipment and books to Orlando in preparation for it to become our London home. On 30th June Alejandro and I handed over the keys to Old Ford Lock and closed the towpath gate for the final time, concluding this stage of our lives. I walked down the towpath without looking back.

We took a taxi to St Katharine Docks in silence, both lost in our thoughts. The rest of the afternoon was spent finding places to stow everything on the boat. That night we went to sleep on Orlando, for the first time as our London home.

At 4am on 1st July 2021 we woke up and set off with our cases for the airport. A new adventure was beginning.

: c :

In transit, USA, Wanderer

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[ 17:16 thursday 2nd november 2017 – amtrak coast starlight, oakland to los angeles ]

like a gigantic migratory creature this train left seattle at 9am yesterday morning on its southward journey. 24 hours later at 9am this morning, heralded by a mournful tritone whistle and clanging bell, the huge double-decker tube of shining corrugated steel snaked alongside the platform at oakland jack london square beneath a crisp blue autumn sky and i climbed aboard. the journey will reach its conclusion when the train pulls into the art deco splendour of los angeles union station at 9pm tonight. i’ll have been on board for 12 hours of its 36 hour journey.

for all america’s supposed abandonment of the train for its devotion to the automobile, this service is a true inheritor of the nineteenth century trans-continental trains that have all but disappeared from europe. as well as seating carriages equipped with deep reclining armchairs there are sleeper cabins with en-suite bathrooms, an observation car with full-height windows and swivel-chairs, a dining car with linen tablecloths and napkins, even a cinema car.

the train crew is like a troupe of actors assigned slightly over-written parts. the earth-mother cafe attendant who had to deal with an armed war veteran’s post-traumatic meltdown as the sun rose. the irascible dining car host whose announcements mimic a television game show and whose timings for meal sittings seem to be entirely arbitrary. the senior conductor whose messages elaborate an evolving narrative of her grudge towards one of the junior conductors regarding some money she loaned them which has yet to be returned.

meanwhile the mix of passengers is almost unfathomable. on european trains one finds a fairly representative cross-section of society, rich and poor alike. on this train it feels like 99% of american society is absent and instead the train is populated with just a handful of narrow niches. people on low incomes with too much luggage to carry by greyhound bus (the only travel option that’s cheaper); wealthier people who don’t like flying and can’t be bothered to drive; hardcore railway buffs; folks like me who are doing it for the sheer adventure.

for most of the journey i’ve been camped in the observation car with a couple of dozen people scattered around the banquettes and swivel chairs. leaving oakland we passed through the decayed industrial residue and salt pans of the east bay to the bland techno-architecture of san jose. this gave way to the hyper-fertile agriculture of the salinas valley followed by baroque twists and curls through hill country where the grass gradually paled from lush green to dry yellow. in san luis obispo the train stopped for 40 minutes so i took the opportunity to run into the centre of town, buy myself a mango smoothie and run back; pressed on by the thrilling fear the train might continue on its way without me.

after san luis obispo the track joined the pacific coast for a spectacular sequence of dunes, wild beaches and rocky promontories. i couldn’t help being reminded of the stretch of brunel’s great western railway where the track runs beside the atlantic coast along the red sandstone cliffs of teignmouth and dawlish. but of course this is california and everything is a thousand times larger.

as the track reached the coast the atmosphere in the car shifted perceptibly. conversation became muted and everyone turned to gaze at the ocean, as if drawn by the same primal urge towards the sea. a lady with steel-grey hair hanging to her waist and a sequence of trembling chins struck up a running commentary on the passing coastline, uniting the rest of us as her audience.

for half an hour either side of vandenburgh air force base the coastal scenery was punctuated by rocket launch towers and radar installations. california has the power to make even such surreal intrusions seem as much part of its landscape as a rock outcrop or river. shortly after point conception i watched a pair of whales breach the surface close inshore and send twin fountains of steam rising from their blowholes.

almost a decade ago i performed one of the canonical american journeys driving down highway 1 along the coast from san francisco to san diego (photographs here). it was a magnifient experience, particularly the stretch down the big sur coast. ever since then i’ve been yearning to travel the same route by train.

in los angeles i’m looking forward to visiting my friends paul and sarah who moved there a couple of years ago. i’ve always felt slightly afraid of the city. the prospect of traffic-infused suburbs stretching to an infinite horizon and a perma-tanned culture of insincerity have been enough to keep me away. but it’s high time i brushed off these prejudices and explored for myself.

these have been happy months. the trampery is doing great things, i feel in harmony with myself and a new romantic focus has appeared in my life. the only note of sadness has been learning of the death of robin murray, a remarkable economist and human. i met him at an event on democratic innovation hosted at the very first trampery building in 2010 and we became friends. his childlike curiosity, brilliance and compassion reminded me of michael young. now he is gone i realise how much i will miss his advice.

my journey continues.

: c :

In transit, Stromboli, Wanderer

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[ 15:58 wednesday 3 may – hydrofoil from stromboli to milazzo ]

a few minutes ago i embraced matteo, salvo and my other friends on stromboli then hauled my bags up the gangplank to the hydrofoil and gave a final salute as it pulled away from the quay. today the volcano is sombre with a dense white mass of cloud swirling around the top. every fifteen or twenty minutes a black stain appears in the cloud as an eruption blasts its lava, ash and gases into the air. the weather has been restless the last few days with the wind veering from south to west to north to south to west again and the sea switching rapidly between calm and crashing waves.

i arrived the day before easter with some slight trepidation. what would it be like to be with matteo again so soon after we broke up? would we want to see each other? would the pleasure of being on the island be impaired? within hours of arriving my anxiety had evaporated. matteo and i spent time together each day. sometimes alone, sometimes with friends and family. there was never any awkwardness or rancour. we talked with the same honesty as before. i think we recognised this was remarkable for two people who have just separated and perhaps thought even more highly of each other for it.

matteo’s family were amazingly welcoming to me. they invited me to easter lunch at their house, second only to the christmas meal. there were twenty people at table including three aunts and two uncles who’d come over from puglia, matteo’s brother and two sisters, his older sister’s husband and their two children. the meal was exquisite and continued without pause for four hours. knowing i didn’t eat meat matteo’s mother and aunts had been kind enough to prepare several dishes specially for me. the high point was roasted totani (pink-fleshed deep sea squid) stuffed with ricotta, mint and walnuts. sublime.

for the first time in all my years on stromboli i followed the island’s easter procession before lunch. this is a ritualised portrayal of mary’s reunion with the resurrected christ and a symbolic linking of the island’s two churches. at midday on easter sunday a statue of christ departs from the church of san vincenzo in scari on the shoulders of four men whilst a statue of the virgin leaves the church of san bartolo in piscita. each statue is preceded by banners, bells and chanting with a crowd of islanders following behind. with careful coordination the statues meet each other mid-way between the two churches. as they close the final gap each statue bows several times to the other. at the climactic moment when they come together mary’s tightly-closed robes are unbound to release doves or swallows which fly away having been secreted inside. after this the two statues proceed together to san bartolo where they are placed on pedestals and the priest ends the ceremony with a short address. it was a beautiful piece of theatre, much lighter than the hysterical mortifications of the easter spectacles i witnessed at trapani and marsala. photographs and film will follow.

irene did add a somewhat macabre edge to the story, explaining that the island’s children are pressed into service to stalk the island with nets and clubs the day before easter to catch the birds for hiding under mary’s robe. apparently the young hunters are prone to be a little over-enthusiastic in their efforts resulting in a proportion of the fowl being despatched to the great aviary in the sky before they can participate in the procession.

a couple of days after easter i spent the whole night on spiaggia lunga with salvo, renzo, luca and arianna. we were graced by one of the most spectacular meteorites i’ve ever seen. it arced across the sky in a shallow diagonal right the way to the horizon leaving a thick trail of sparkling light in its wake. we were left whooping in wide-eyed amazement. towards dawn i became completely absorbed watching as the colours of sea, sky and vegetation changed hue minute by minute. then as the sun rose dozens of swallows started to swoop in a circuit around us flying just a few centimetres above the surface of the sea. at the same time thousands to tiny white moths, just one or two millimetres across, appeared around us in a layer a metre above the black sand. none of us had ever seen anything like it before. i felt lucky; more than lucky.

following matteo’s request the island’s priest (don luciano da rico) very kindly gave me permission to play the organ in the church of san vincenzo which i’ve never done before. as we ascended the spiral steps to the dust-covered balcony i didn’t have great expectations of the ancient, rarely-played instrument. underneath the stops was a handwritten maintainer’s note dated 1917. the panting and wheezing emitted when i turned on the pump suggested this might have been the the date of its last service. the air pressure was irregular, one stop produced a sound like a car’s starter motor, several didn’t work at all and those that did work were erratic and outrageously out of tune. but despite this i completely fell in love with the instrument. the principals were chaffy and sweet. the quints were piquant and angular. the acoustic was thick but still intimate. best of all the unpredictable air pressure gave rise to a tremelo effect which sounded uncannily like a human flautist and changed with different combinations of keys. over three days i recorded several hours of improvisation. matteo joined in for some of it.

on my way to the island sergio mentioned that telecom italia was offering a cheap deal for data so i called them to active it. predictably, nothing happened. after several persistent calls to their support centre matteo managed to get it working. but the moment it was running i realised i had no wish to be connected to the internet and the cat’s cradle of services that interlace my urban routine. so i turned it off.

: c :

In transit, London, Photography, Poland, UK

p h o t o s : may to november 2009

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[ 00:55 monday 8 february – haggerston road ]

in the last nine months i’ve accumulated an intimidating backlog of slides waiting to be scanned and uploaded. in an effort to catch up here are four sets comprising seventy-six pictures:

– volker’s barge, clapton to limehouse (v 2009) : 15 pictures
– last visit to granny’s house (v 2009) : 14 pictures
– fundacja techsoup, warsaw (v & xi 2009) : 9 pictures
– london (v-xi 2009) : 38 pictures

one picture from each set posted below.
: c :

In transit, Venezuela, Wanderer

c a r a c a s

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[ 17:49 thursday 31 december – bus from caracas to playa grande, venezuela ]

stuck in traffic at the edge of caracas airport with landing airliners passing low overhead. car horns and salsa music blare on every side, punctuated by the report of exploding fireworks as excitement builds towards new year. the sixteen seats of the bus are filled with people returning from a day in the city. around us the jungle-clad mountains are hung with sullen clouds as the tropical twilight quickens towards darkness.

i flew into caracas airport yesterday afternoon and immediately threw myself into a battle to find a seat on one of the two light aircraft crossing to the island of gran roque. my friend matias lives on a miniscule islet called rasqui, where there is no mains electricity or water, which is located in the same archipelago. there’s no way to contact him but he’s expecting me in the next few days. it proved impossible to get a seat for today but the application of a modest bribe secured me space on a flight leaving caracas at half past seven tomorrow morning. it will curtail my new year festivities but i find myself blithely unconcerned about that. from gran roque i’ll find someone with a boat willing to take me over to rasqui.

after a sublime ten-hour sleep (having had none on tuesday night) at a small hotel near the airport i spent today exploring caracas with a young french yachtsman called adrien whom i met at the airport. he got a seat on the same flight as me to join his friends and their yacht at gran roque. he’s an excellent fellow adventurer.

the first thing that struck me about caracas is that there are no tourists. during seven hours today we saw a total of three. this has the benefit that the usual poor-country ecosystem of aggressive touts and “guides” is also absent. it also means that we are wildly conspicuous. people stare at us everywhere we go. in general people are very kind and solicitous. every few minutes someone comes up and warns us that walking around in whatever area where we are is dangerous. the second thing that struck me is the ubiquity of enormous posters featuring the ever-grinning mr chavez accompanied by revolutionary slogans.

this evening adrien and i will follow our noses and seek some entertaining dive in which to celebrate. then it’ll be time to catch a few hours’ sleep and begin the next stage of the journey. this will probably be my final despatch until i return from the island.

in the meantime, feliz ano.

: c :

In transit, Sicilia, Stromboli, Wanderer

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[ 08:58 monday 28 september – bus from central palermo to punta raisi airport, sicilia ]

it’s touch and go whether i’ll make my flight back to london. i got to the station quarter of an hour early for my 8:09 train. after twenty minutes it struck me as odd that the station was swarming with people, predominantly school children, but i hadn’t seen a single train. this seemed ominous for peak time on a monday morning. arrivals were being announced and passengers advised to stand back from the edge of the platform but no trains were materialising.

i asked an old man on the platform who said “if the train doesn’t come, maybe the next one will” which was admirably philosophical but not exactly reassuring. 8:09 came and went. then the indicator board mysteriously went blank and details for the 8:39 appeared on the next platform. i searched out an official who apologised that there was a strike and all trains were cancelled.

once i would have felt irritated that no signs had been put out, no announcements made, to warn travelers of the situation. but my relationship with sicily has reached a point where i accept her foibles, perhaps even feel affection for them. so i simply rushed outside and got a seat in the half-hourly bus which runs from the station to the airport.

that was half an hour ago. this is the peak of the morning rush hour and we’re still battling through the palermo streets towards the autostrada. my chances of reaching the airport before check-in closes are evenly balanced.

i flew into trapani last saturday with sergio and spent several days there with his family. then on tuesday i journeyed to milazzo and took wednesday morning’s first hydrofoil to stromboli. the crew told me a scirocco was rising from the south-east and they were uncertain if they’d be able to dock. indeed there was a large sea running by the time we reached the island three hours later. but they managed to come alongside just long enough for me to leap off.

that was the last boat to dock until saturday. within an hour the waves were crashing down on the quay. there’s a special atmosphere on the island when it’s cut off like this. nobody arrives, nobody leaves. then after two days the wind and sea shifted ninety degrees and a maestrale came up from the north-east. now the waves pounded spiaggia lunga whilst scari and the quay fell into the lea of the island. stromboli was re-connected to the outside world.

yesterday afternoon as i was packing my bags the wind shifted back to the south-east and waves began to lick the sides of the quay again. one of the two companies running hydrofoils to stromboli cancelled their services. but my boat managed to come alongside. the hydrofoil was pitching and lurching alarmingly as we ran up the gangplank. it was the roughest i’ve seen anyone dock there.

the journey back to milazzo was quite an adventure. every few minutes the forward foils would catch a wave and the bow would slam down sending torrents of water over the cabin. i have the greatest admiration for the siremar crews. they continue to operate these machines masterfully under conditions in which most would stay in port. we reached milazzo right on time and i caught the last train to palermo.

it was eleven in the evening when i arrived in palermo. after my time on stromboli and with sergio in trapani i was expecting palermo to be the anti-climax of the trip. but sicily blessed me with one last surprise and i found myself in the chaos of a religious festival in the quarter where i was staying. a huge statue of the madonna was being carried through the streets by young men with priests and white-robed women carrying candles in front and two fifty-piece brass bands following behind. every twenty metres a handbell would ring, the statue would be set down and one of the bearers would shout invocations at the statue at the top of his voice to be affirmed by the rest of the bearers with an impassioned cry of “viva maria!”. all the while the bands kept playing, one alternating with the other to save the musicians from complete exhaustion. it was incredibly moving, there were moments when i had tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat.

dangling my camera, video camera and audio recorder from various limbs i threw myself into the thick of the procession. it took an hour passing down via roma before pausing and turning into piazza sant’anna. the piazza was blazing with ornate festal arches studded with coloured lights. as the procession entered a welter of fireworks commenced which rose to a deafening crescendo. fragments of burning carboard began to rain down and people started retreating nervously before a series of huge explosions marked its finale. the statue passed into the small plain church of maria of the mercede. there was an awkward moment when it came off the ramp to its resting place at the alter, triggering a thrill of terror that some harbinger of bad fortune was about to transpire, then a final heave restored her to her resting place and everyone relaxed.

i ate a carton of panelli on the street, drank a few glasses of rum at the tiny bar “monkey” on the piazza where i met some friendly musicians, then it was time for me to retire and get a few hours’ sleep.

thus sicily continually tests me and shows me her different faces. it is a place, a people, where i find a vividness and intensity of life that raises me above myself.

we are on the autostrada now. i think i will reach the airport in time.

: c :

In transit, UK, Wanderer

r i v e r b o r n e

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[ 18:56 sunday 2 august – river stort, roydon, essex ]

sitting in the saloon of volker’s barge as the evening sun filters through the trees and sparkles on the river outside. it’s an old dutch barge to which a superstructure was added in the seventies. there’s lots of light and space. most of the time volker lives on a mooring at springfield marina on the river lea at clapton in east london. when he gets sick of london he just unties and takes the boat somewhere else for a week or two. in the nineteenth century railways were often built close to the routes of canals constucted in the eighteenth century. as a result it’s generally possible for volker to moor close to a station and commute back to london for his work lecturing at university college london. it’s an excellent way to accommodate elements of nomadism within the vicissitudes of urban life.

yesterday afternoon i took a train through the grimy north london suburbs and out to cheshunt in hertfordshire. from there a short bike ride brought me to the river and volker’s boat. we chugged upriver for the next few hours. the leaden sky became progressively heavier and heavier as we went. finally they opened and unleashed a downpour. volker sprang out on the foredeck and scrubbed it down in the rain, getting soaked in the process. i always loved to be by water in the rain.

near hoddesdon we turned onto the river stort which quickly became narrower and wilder. many of britain’s rivers were canalised in the late eighteenth century. in some cases the natural character of the river survives more or less intact. in others the imposition of man was more intense and the river feels like an artificial creation. we went a little way then moored under some trees. then we walked a little way to a secluded lake where we stripped and swam. it was bliss.

this morning we continued up to roydon in essex until a modern railway bridge thwarted us. the coach-house roof was just a couple of centimetres too high to pass beneath. we considered inviting some plump fellows from a pub to clamber aboard or opening the cocks and letting water into the bilge to lower the boat so we could pass beneath. but finally we admitted defeat, moored by the railway station and continued our exploration by bike. by this time the sky had cleared and the sun was shining so it was a pleasure to unhitch our bikes from the taffrail and set off across the fields.

we just returned to the boat and opened a couple of peronis. later this evening i’ll get the train back to london.

this trip marks my first outing with a new solid state video camera i had shipped from tokyo. it’s been interesting to use it in parallel with my stills camera. it will take a while for me to develop habits and style with it but already i find myself starting to parse subjects for still or moving capture. it will be interesting to see the results back in london.

: c :

In transit, London, USA, Wanderer

a m e r i k a n a

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[ 17:09 thursday 26 march – virgin flight 11, london to boston ]

arcing across the ice floes towards nova scotia the cabin crew distributes a meal they badge as “breakfast” or “a light snack” depending on the time of day. today the latter. the meals are identical either way. inflight time has a structure and grammar of its own, blithe to the daily cycle of hamlets and cities far beneath.

each time i cross the north atlantic i’m fascinated by the changing character of the sea ice. at the moment i’m seeing it frequently enough to start discerning its language of structure and motion telling the seasons as surely as the cycle of buds, leaves and blossoms with which i’m more familiar. the monolithic expanses of white i saw a month ago are now fractured and stretches of blue are beginning to gaping amidst them. from my vantage point eleven kilometres in the air patterns become evident. as patches of ice become detached from a larger body and float out into open water they form T-shaped units with graceful curlicues at the branches. these units sometimes form convoys, each element smaller than its predecessor. flying, whilst destructive, permits us to appreciate aspects of the earth’s beauty that are otherwise imperceivable.

this is my fourth trip to the united states since the start of the year. the first was in mid-january, immediately following my return from egypt, when i travelled to san diego to give a talk and receive an award for trampoline. the weather was serene and sunny but i was obliged to spend all but a few minutes inside a conference hall. from san diego i flew to san francisco to attend meetings. i was staying with shemoel so each evening when my trampoline work was complete we recorded songs and experimented with different ways of combining acoustic and electronic sound elements. one day we drove up to point reyes to meet sara winge at the home of bart hopkin, a friend of hers who invents instruments. bart showed us some of his creations, which ranged from a plucked string instrument with strings were connected in triangles to wind instruments where corrugated tubing was used to generate standing waves. shemoel demonstrated one of his sound sculptures and we showed how live processing frameworks such as max/msp can be combined with micro-controllers such as arduino to create extended instruments. after that we all played together for a couple of hours, a delicious mass of filigree sounds.

the second trip was in february when i travelled over to long beach with emma and james to give a talk about one click organisations at the bil conference. bil was conceived as a parallel-universe ted with a focus on new thinking but with open access and free entry in contrast to ted’s exclusivity and expense. i caught half a day of the very first bil in monterey last year on quinn’s advice and this year i was eager to attend the whole thing. the organisers gave me the second slot in the main hall, following a talk about privacy by brad templeton. i’d decided not to use slides but changed my mind at the last minute and threw together a deck during brad’s talk. it was a lovely event. i particularly enjoyed meeting the folks behind the noisebridge hacker space in san francisco, who drove down en masse. also a young photographer called michael strout with a great talent for lighting, who did a shoot with me in the courtyard. mitch altman was there with his brain machine glasses. they flash leds over one’s eyes and buzz into one’s ears at carefully calculated frequencies which change over a twenty minute cycle. the effect is most peculiar, one is gradually drawn into a meditative state and begins to hallucinate colours and patterns. mitch also invented the magnificent “tv b gone” remote control. entering a japanese restaurant with him on the final evening in long beach the two giant tv screens mysteriously deactivated themselves leaving us and our friends to converse in peace. on the way back to london i stopped in san francisco for one night to see shemoel. we recorded a couple of songs and decided to call our project “the dupio”.

my third trip was at the beginning of march when i came over to boston and cambridge for some trampoline meetings. it was bright and clear for the first couple of days, though there was still snow on the ground. i drove out to point halibut and traversed the jumbled granite boulders around the coast. it was hard going but this is a terrain i know and love from cornwall and the isles of scilly. the trick is to keep one’s momentum up, trust one’s instincts and resist the temptation to think about it. in a way this has become a metaphor for how i live. there is a pleasure in sensing the angles of each rock in turn and allowing oneself to ricochet from one to the next. on the third day there was a snowstorm which i enjoyed mightily. i found my way to a noisecore show at tufts university where one of the bands dressed as giant rats. i heard a performance by a minimalist cellist called jeremy harman and we got together to play the next day. late one evening i visited mako hill in somerville to better understand his position on zero-cost duplication and swap notes on web music services. he was very impressive.

this fourth trip is to attend foo east at microsoft’s research centre in cambridge. having been invited to last summer’s event in sebastopol i wasn’t expecting another chance so i was flattered to receive the invitation. i may talk about any of organisational analytics, emergent structure, one click organisations and live processing. i’m also bringing some musical kit with me so it’ll be possible to do a session with reaktor if i can interest anyone in that.

: c :

Germany, In transit, Wanderer

b e r l i n t o 2 0 0 9

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[ 09:10 friday 2 january – schonefeld airport, berlin ]

my first despatch of the year comes from schonefeld airport’s excellent bakery, where i sit watching snow falling on the tarmac outside. timur dropped me off an hour ago. i’m trying to avoid rapid movement. or indeed movement of any kind. a week in berlin to see in the new year has left me feeling somewhat delicate.

between my arrival last saturday and today’s departure i have got up in daylight precisely once. every other day i’ve woken in the late afternoon after the sun had set, breakfasted in a turkish cafe round the corner from yilmaz’ flat, made my way to the conference centre at alexanderplatz, passed eight hours at the chaos communication congress, then departed there around two in the morning to commence a night of revelry in kreuzberg and neukoln’s multitude of charming underground bolt-holes, finally returning home between six and eight in the morning.

new year was the piece de resistance. starting with a dinner for twenty in timur’s huge basement we proceeded to rampage through the streets and take over any parties we found along our way. a toy guitar remained slung around my neck ready to irritate anyone in my vicinity with cheesy eight-bit melodies. timur and i developed a dreadful scouser routine which we performed for lucky travellers on the trams. then we ended up somewhere in alexanderplatz where performance artists had been let loose in a rabbit warren of tiny rooms. there was some kind of romantic interlude here but my memory is hazy. then there’s a gap and i’m at another party in neukoln with jan talking earnestly about what was important in 2008. at some point i staggered home, guided by my faithful gps, collapsing at yilmuz’ flat around eleven in the morning.

by nature i’m not a hedonist. on the contrary i’m prone to be shy, introverted and self-conscious. all my life i’ve felt frustrated with the limitations this imposed on me and have struggled to overcome them. i’ve made steady progress over the years, gradually beating down my self-consciousness enough to dance, interact with strangers and nurture the seeds of a more exuberant me. the past week represents a triumph for these efforts.

mum disapproves of such decadence and points out i’m too old for it. but at the grand age of thirty-seven i find i can generally out-dance revelers a decade younger than me. for so long as i have the energy for it and it gives me such pleasure then i intend to continue. it’s a healthy counterpoint to my overly cerebral personality and my desk-bound work.

my favourite memory from the whole week is sitting on the back seat of a tandem with timur in front, yulmaz’ piano accordion round my neck, cack-handedly blasting out songs as we pedaled round the streets at twilight on new year’s eve. timur has an exceptional gift for instigating such occurrences for which berlin provides an incomparable canvas.

so everyone, let’s make this a good year shall we.

: c :